


In The Eyes Of A Canine

by NerdInResidency



Series: Youth and Other Contradictions [1]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: High School, Idk how to tag things, Other, Suicide, i just want to post this ugh i'll just add more tags later, this sounds so cliche lmao
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 13:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9074272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerdInResidency/pseuds/NerdInResidency
Summary: Because quitters never win.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story (or, more accurately, one branch of a story) I've had in my head for a while. I probably shouldn't even post this chapter yet bc I don't have any others ready and I haven't really planned anything out but screw it I feel like I just need to get something out there right now.

Pete figures he’s just about the only seventeen-year-old in the history of the goddamn world to wake up before his alarm on the first day of senior year.

Freshmen? With all that apprehensive anticipation pumping some sort of adrenaline-fueled equivalent to caffeine into their half-matured bodies, it’s a wonder they even sleep at all. Sophmores? Meh. They’re certainly more stable than they were a year prior, but there’s still enough naive vibrancy left in them for moderate jitters, or at least enough of an investment in the concept of academics to make efforts to avoid being late. Juniors? If they’re seriously into overachieving, then it’s possible. But seniors? Seniors are far removed from the realm of giving a fuck. In fact, seniors can barely recall the days when they were part of it. As far as seniors are concerned, “giving a fuck” was that nondescript road exit they passed 5 miles back and hardly even bothered to glance at the sign for as they sped off into the once-abstract dominion of adulthood.

Of course, it’s not like Pete’s any different. If anything, Pete gives the least fucks out of any of his peers; in his case, the counter has gone below zero. Yeah, that’s it: he’s managed to create the concept of negative fucks. Pete is the goddamn Brahmagupta of fucks.

That’s sort of the problem, actually. If people are indeed built by some sort of divine being or being before getting sent down to Earth, like some sort of angelic assembly line, whatever angel was in charge of “apathy” on the day Pete was made totally deserves to be fired.

But all fucks (or lack thereof) aside, the point still stands that Pete Wentz, in all of his fuckless glory, finds himself lying wide awake at four thirty-seven AM on the morning of his first day of school.

Of course, “wide awake” is a bit of an exaggeration, as most functioning human beings reserve that term for a state of peak mental activity, in which one is capable of maximum productivity and possesses a sharp mind packed with new ideas and an aptitude for problem-solving. Pete’s mind, however, hasn’t met that criteria for at least three years, and by now he’s learned to just cut his losses and consider any condition besides total lack of consciousness to be one of sufficient wakefulness. In actuality, when he says “wide awake”, he really means that his sluggish mind has managed to transition out of the blissful blackness of sleep and into it’s apparently preferred shade of pale blue-gray, sort of reminiscent of a faded pair of jeans that some sickeningly optimistic do-it-yourselfer tried to dye back to their original color with the completely wrong shade.

Pete stares blankly around his room, not able to find in himself the motivation to even turn his head, much less pull himself out of the tangle of washer-softened bedding he is comfortably enveloped in. Well, as with “awake”, comfort is a relative term, because he’s wasted so many pointless hours in half-voluntary immobility atop the firm mattress that it’s beginning to feel somewhat like a prison. But hey, so does everything else in his life, and at least the bed comes with a pillow.

His gaze travels slowly over each piece of furniture, making tiny observations about each one as he goes. The dust-covered guitar case in the corner, which he can remember once causing a current of electrifying intrigue to jolt through his body every time he so much as laid eyes on it, has a small scuff of dirt near the bottom, likely leftover from the days where Pete lugged the formerly-beloved instrument around with him everywhere he went. The massive bookshelf, home to more CDs and various trinkets than actual books, still has a small Han Solo sticker stuck to the back panel of the third shelf from Pete and Gabe’s Star Wars phase in second grade. The faded Metallica shirt hanging haphazardly out of an unclosed dresser drawer has a speck of lint clinging to it, the grayish fibers bright against the dark blue fabric of the shirt.

Pete takes in each of these little details, treating each one as if he didn’t already notice it yesterday morning, or the morning before that, or any of hundreds of other mornings he’s spent in this exact same position, staring at the exact same arrangement of Metallica vinyls lined up in the bookshelf beside the smug little face of the galaxy’s top smuggler, with the exact same poster of Bob Dylan staring down at him from it’s spot on the wall with the exact same ruminating expression.

The dull senselessness of it all would likely begin to irritate most people after a while, but frustration requires actually giving a fuck, and, as already established, actually caring about his life is not included within Pete’s ever-dwindling skillset. He does, however, possess at least enough sentience to eventually get bored, at which point he finally summons the strength to, in one fluid movement, push his body into a vertical position and swing his legs over the side of the bed. From this new position, he looks around the room once again, but this time only allows for a quick glance before continuing on his oh-so-valiant mission down the hall and to the kitchen.

He reaches his destination approximately two minutes later, having only paused to stare aimlessly at the doorframe once, which, as far as he’s concerned, is practically a record. He isn't surprised to find his mother already standing, fully awake, in front of the coffee machine, as he vaguely remembers hearing the shuffle of her footsteps in the hallway sometime in between his thinking about death and pondering the reproductive organs of turtles. She stands with her back to him, facing the coffeemaker as it slowly brings forth a thin trickle of liquid life force, and he hovers in the doorway for a few moments, content to just watch her go about her business. It seems he’s been doing quite a lot of that lately. Watching.

Understandable. Watching is, after all, the easiest alternative to doing. And if there’s one recurring pattern in life that never fails to run it’s course, it's that the doing part is always where things go downhill. (Pete should know. The one time he ever tried taking action in life, he woke up with an IV stuck in his arm, a condescendingly saccharine nurse, and more awkward silences than there are contained in all five Twilight movies combined).

Dale taps her fingers absentmindedly on the counter, and Pete almost laughs at himself for being slightly startled when the sound isn’t accompanied by the familiar clink of her wedding ring against the granite. Feeling suddenly restless in his impersonality, he takes a step forward and grunts a brusque, “Morning.”

“Pete. You’re up early,” Dale greets, as if his presence is a surprise. As if she hasn’t been making that exact same remark every morning for the past four months. As if there isn’t a pan of freshly cooked scrambled eggs already waiting on the stove beside her. As if, in  **Pitt** , even abnormalities like mild insomnia aren’t quick to become just further characteristics of the monotone.

Or perhaps that’s a universal feature of life. Perhaps routine is inevitable, and there is no true escape from the inevitable tedium it precipitates. Perhaps he should turn around right now, find the nearest semi truck, and march right out in front of it.

Once upon a time, thoughts such as those were once what kept Pete up at night, thoughts roiling and stomach churning. Once upon a time, Pete’s mind was a slender ballerina, with skirts twirling as she performed elegant chaines turns on the cliff approaching insanity, growing faster and faster as she neared the treacherous fall. Now, however, she has mastered a new move. Now, she is perfectly still, slim torso outstretched as she stands in a perfect arabesque over the cliff edge, staring straight into the bottomless ravine below and discovering nothing but gray.

Well, gray, and an apparently endless supply of pretentious-ass metaphors, along with some random tidbits of ballet terminology. Pete’s had better moments.

He doesn’t say any of this aloud, of course. No, he chooses to watch his mother in silence, taking slow sips from the mug of coffee that she has set out for him on the counter. He remains stubbornly mute as she lets out a resigned sigh, which seems to be more directed at life in general than any particular person, and smooths a few loose strands of hair back into her low ponytail before taking a drink from her own mug.

If Pete still possessed the ability to feel anything except fatigue, he’d probably experience a twinge of guilt at his mother’s appearance. The skin under her eyes hangs like the drapes around a coffin, discolored to the point of appearing a deep aubergine, as opposed to the caramel hue it used to sport. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know why (although, it wasn’t so long ago that Pete was spending more hours he cares to count scribbling down complex equations in the front row of an AP physics classroom, so even if an understanding of the basics of aerospace engineering was required to make such an observation, he might just be all right).

The silence in the room isn’t broken until at least ten minutes later, which Pete supposes makes sense, as he’s pretty sure he remembers reading somewhere that it takes approximately that amount of time after consumption for caffeine to start showing it’s life-saving effects. The eggs have gone cold, which rather defeats the point of having a fresh-cooked breakfast prepared, but neither of them comments on it.

“Your principal emailed me yesterday.” Dale relays the words lightly, as if the statement is simply conversational, but there’s a discernible tinge sharpness beneath the air of neutrality.

Pete keeps his eyes glued to the plate in front of him, watching as the smooth surface overtaken by the room temperature scrambled eggs that his mother scoops onto it. He cocks an eyebrow, playing off of her measuredly colloquial tone. “Managed to fuck up already, have I? I think I deserve a damn medal.”

Dale lets out a small sigh, a habit which Pete has always found slightly comical. After all, sighs are supposed to be a way of expressing exasperation, signifying that you are annoyed by and just generally done with who or whatever they are directed towards, and to restrict one to the point of it being practically imperceptible is basically like saying “hey, I’m totally done with you and quite frankly don’t give a flying fuck about what you have to say, but, wait, I actually do care and am going to refrain from giving you a detailed description of how I would like to deep fry your innards right now, and yet I’m still going to make this little noise to express my vexedness.” Like not caring at all, but still caring too much to express it. It’s contradictory. Pete may be a pioneer in the brave new field of Fuckular Arithmetic, but not even he can come up with a way to mathematically express giving both zero fucks and several at the same time.

Having finished dishing up the food, Dale takes her seat across from Pete, trying in vain to get him to meet her eyes (an effort to which he stubbornly responds by pretending to be completely engrossed in the process of opening a bottle of Tabasco). “The school is having an assembly on Thursday about suicide prevention. He wants you to speak at it.”

Pete shakes the Tabasco onto the mound of eggs in front of him with about as much grace as a motorcycle gang trying to cross a tightrope. “Yeah?” He jerks the bottle down again, and by now the soft yellow hills of egg have been painted almost completely red, crisscrossed with streaks of hot sauce like the makeup design in a probably racist Hollywood movie about Native Americans. “And did you tell him to take his district-directed ‘actually giving a shit’ routine and shove it up his ass? That is, if he can get it past the goddamn tree branch he’s already got stuck in there.”

Another small sigh. A not-not fuck. School hasn’t even started yet, and Pete’s brain is already more scrambled than his eggs. “You always did have a way with words.” 

“It’s a talent. But you did say no, right? Because if you really think I’m going to go in front of the entire school with a mic and  _ not _ attempt some sort of hentai reenactment-”

Dale cuts off that masterpiece of a mental image with a weary shake of her head, though the glint in her eyes betrays hidden amusement. “I declined the invitation.  _ Politely _ .”

“Because manners are what everyone looks for in the suicide risk and his divorcee mother- FUCK!” What would’ve no doubt turned out to be quite a colorful tirade is interrupted by a somewhat garbled string of expletives after Pete bites down on a heaping forkful of his aggressively seasoned breakfast concoction and witnesses firsthand what approximately five times the suggested serving size of hot sauce does to one’s taste buds at six thirty in the morning.

After a rather impressive display of profanity that does not, under any circumstances, include the phrase _ “fuck fucking fucknutter sundae sprinkled with with fuckitty fucking fucks and a side of fuckable fucking fucks,”  _ Pete’s mouth finally cools off, though the same cannot be said about his temper. He shakes his head in cynical disgust that probably would’ve been a lot more effective were he not still obviously red-faced and on the verge of gagging. “Suicide prevention. You know, if they really wanted kids to stop throwing themselves into moving traffic, they’d get an actual chef in the cafeteria. That soggy cardboard shit they call pizza is enough to send anyone into therapy.”

Dale, whose expression was previously one of mild amusement at Pete’s breakfast fiasco and ensuing reaction, sobers suddenly, and a look of sorrow flickers across the eyes with which she gazes upon her still-coughing son. The scraping of her chair on the hardwood floor seems inexplicably loud as she stands and, in an oddly distant voice, says, “I’ll go put some toast in.” 

Right. Teen suicide is a bit of a sore subject in the Wentz household at the moment.

(Good thing Pete is utterly fuckless).

**Author's Note:**

> PROOFREADING IS FOR LOSERS (translation: I'm lazy and hate myself lmao tell me if you come across any stuff i should fix)  
> that was kind of short and the more I write the next chapter the more I realize I have no idea where I'm going with this but oh well


End file.
